Diplomatic disagreement for a minute of silence for the victims | The body, after 40 meetings on the conflict, continues to show its paralysis
Since just one year ago Russia started the war in Ukraine, the United Nations Security Council Has celebrated 40 meetings dedicated to the conflict. With Moscow as one of the five permanent members with right to veto (together with China, the United States, France and the United Kingdom), the paralysis has been imposed on the organ, limited to seeing itself as a stage for crashes and of the diplomatic failures. This Friday, in a session dedicated precisely to the anniversary of the war, these disagreements have once again been exposed, including with a moment of stress graph.
The tense moment in the Security Council of the #UN #Ukraine #Russia pic.twitter.com/6QnyczVUTI
— Idoya Noain (@noainny) February 24, 2023
That revealing episode has come in the first moments of the session. After offering an intervention, the Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba has asked to keep standing a minute of silence for the victims of aggression & rdquor ;. He Secretary General of the UN, Antònio Guterres, and almost all those present, have risen, while the Russian ambassador, Vasili Nebenzia, immediately began to protest vigorously and to ask the current presidency, which this month holds Malta, to speak, after which those who had stood up sat down again (only they had remained seated representatives of Brazil and China).
A agitated Nebenzia He has assured at that moment that he was standing up but “for the memory of all the victims what happened in Ukraine starting in 2014& rdquor ;, a reference to the year in which the clashes began in the Donbas territories that Russia has annexed without recognition from the international community, as it did with Crimea that year, and where it has accused Kiev of persecuting pro-Russian citizens. “All lives are priceless,” Nebenzia said.
The Kremlin representative then addressed gesturing repeatedly to Guterres for him to get up. And the Portuguese, after a few doubtful moments, it has done. He was then followed by all the foreign ministers and ambassadors and diplomats present at the session.
irreconcilable differences
The diplomatic drama episode was the umpteenth showing of the irreconcilable positions in the Security Council. It also reaffirmed Russia’s belligerence in the face of the challenge of the majority of countries in the body and in the UN, which had been evidenced the day before in a vote in the General Assembly in which 141 countries urged Moscow to abandon Ukraine and the annexed territories. .
Nebenzia had already started the meeting by showing her fighting spirit. Even before the adoption of the agenda, she denounced that the Maltese presidency allowed the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Kuleba, to speak before the members of the body. And to underline her criticism, she recalled that representatives of the Central African Republic, Mali, Haiti and even the vice president of Colombia had a turn to speak after the members of the Council in sessions on their countries. Likewise, Nebenzia had criticized the fact that she was invited to speak, in addition to Josep Borrell as a representative of the European Union, to the ministers of 12 countries, including Spain, whose positions he has reviled as “dictated by the EU& rdquor ;. “They will not add value to the session & rdquor ;, he had said.
An inventory of the disaster of war
This has been opened with a speech by Guterres, who has reiterated the complaint that “the iThe invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter and international law”. And the Portuguese could not go much further than renewing the calls to “give a opportunity for peace & rdquor;or to urge to stop the attacks on the civilian population and infrastructure, or to denounce how “unacceptable” the “veiled threats to use nuclear weapons & rdquor;.
His intervention remained above all as a long inventory of the disaster of war. In this painful list, the Portuguese has mentioned the attacks on civilians and infrastructurethe dozens of cases of sexual violence documented by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the serious violations of prisoners of war rightshundreds of cases of disappearances and arbitrary arrests of civilians…
Guterres has also put numbers to “hell & rdquor; Ukrainians live: almost 18 million people, about 40% of the population, in need of humanitarian aid and protection; That same percentage without the ability to get the necessary food for survival, 30% of the jobs that existed before the war began disappeared…
More of eight million ukrainiansrecalled Guterres, they had to leave the countryand others 5.4 million are internally displaced. Half of the children have had to leave their homes. The World Health Organization has verified more than 700 attacks on medical facilities. More than 3,000 schools have been destroyed or damaged.